Texas seeks to honor concentration camp liberators

When his tank rolled up to the camp, the first thing Private Birney Havey noticed was the stench.

It was overwhelming - a stomach-churning combination of blood and vomit and human waste and other odors he could not identify.

"It was unbelievable. You just couldn't understand the smell," recalled Havey, a longtime resident of Seabrook.

On April 29, 1945, he was among U.S. soldiers from the 42nd Infantry Division who took part in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

Now, Texas, through the state's official Holocaust and Genocide Commission, is tracking down surviving soldiers like Havey who helped liberate Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps. It's a race against time as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that more than 370 veterans of World War II die every day.

"We have an active search going on to try and find them," said Peter Berkowitz, a retired Houston businessman and former chairman of the commission.

Texas seeks to honor concentration camp liberators

Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Photographed in his home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in Seabrook.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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An old photo of Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', while a soldier in World War II

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', poses for a photo in his Seabrook, Texas home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. Havey was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', talks about being a soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Photographed in his home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in Seabrook.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', poses for a photo in his Seabrook, Texas home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. Havey was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Photographed in his home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in Seabrook.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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Havey's original helmet is incased with a white glove in his Seabrook, Texas home. Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. ... more

Havey's original helmet is incased with a white glove in his Seabrook, Texas home. Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Photographed in his home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in Seabrook. less

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Photographed in his home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in Seabrook.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

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Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', poses for a photo in his Seabrook, Texas home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. Havey was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. ( ... more

Birney Havey, aka 'Chick', poses for a photo in his Seabrook, Texas home on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. Havey was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. ( Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle ) less

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Staff

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Birney﻿ ﻿Havey was awarded several ﻿medals ﻿ during World War II. One of his final battles was helping to liberate the Dachau concentration camp﻿.

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Staff

Berkowitz said they have identified about 160 veterans in Texas who were soldiers in Army units that took part in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The still somewhat tentative plan is to bring as many as possible to Fort Hood in central Texas next summer so they can be officially recognized.

"I'd like to get it up over 200 for this book that we'd like to publish for the Texas liberators," Berkowitz said.

Story 'needs to be told'

The Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission was formed in 2009 to teach Texas students about state-sponsored mass killings, such as Nazis in Europe. Berkowitz said it was a topic that got little attention in most schools in the state.

"There was a great de-emphasis of World War II. You have to learn the lessons from the Holocaust," he said.

The commission lobbied to add more information about the Holocaust to school curriculum and college tests. It is also working with officials at Texas Tech University to create an interactive computer program that will show high school students what it would have been like to go inside one of the camps with liberators like Havey, who also wrote a book about his wartime experiences. The book's title is "Never Left the Battlefields."

"I'm humbled to be part of this team. We're telling a story that needs to be told and told often," said Aliza Wong, a Texas Tech historian who is helping to spearhead the project. "Our hope is that we create this interactive, education piece that inspires students to say, 'I'd like to learn a bit more.' "

At Dachau, Havey saw more than 30 railroad cars filled with decomposing bodies.

They had been prisoners from other camps who were transported to Dachau, about 15 miles from Munich, as the Allies advanced into Germany.

"They (the German) just left them to die," Havey recalled. "They just parked the cars there and let them starve."

Havey did not really know what to make of the place when his platoon approached the main camp. He was aware of German attitudes toward Jews at the time, but Havey, then a kid from St. Louis, had no idea about the enormity of Adolph Hitler's "Final Solution."

He saw hundreds of people rushing toward their column. They were stopped only by the fence line that stretched about 150 feet.

"Our original thought was, 'What the hell did they do to get in here?' " Havey said. "But then, we saw that they were walking skeletons. They were so skinny."

A sobering experience

Havey, 95, said some of the Nazi guards were still at the camp when the Americans arrived. He did not hesitate when asked about their fate.

"The prisoners started bringing us Germans, and we shot them," he said matter-of-factly. "And they were killing (the guards) themselves. They were beating them to death."

Dachau was established in 1933 as the first Nazi concentration camp. Located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory, it was initially set up for political prisoners like German communists and trade unionists, but other groups also were interned there over the years. More than 67,000 prisoners were at Dachau or one of the nearby sub-camps in April 1945 and of that number, about 22,000 were Jews, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The prisoners were begging for food while the American troops searched the camp for any remaining German guards. Even for soldiers hardened by months of tough combat, it was a sobering experience.

"We gave them everything we had," Havey said. "They were overjoyed."

Some of the prisoners at Dachau were carrying large cans of food they had taken from the kitchens used to feed the German guards and staff. But, they were unable to open them. Havey made quick work of them with his bayonet.

"That's the actual bayonet. That opened hundreds of cans," he said, pointing toward the military knife in a display case on the wall of his home.

Even now, more than 70 years later, Havey finds it difficult to fathom the depths of the depravity he witnessed first hand at Dachau.

"You can't imagine working people to death, starving them to death and killing them," he said. "I can't comprehend human beings doing this to other people."

'All skin and bones'

William Phelps, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was a 19-year-old sergeant on May 6, 1945, when his company in the 11th Armored Division entered the Mauthausen concentration camp, about 12 miles east of the city of Linz in what is now upper Austria but was then annexed German territory. The American troops tore down the front gate and went inside.

"You just don't know what to make of it when you see all these bodies piled up," Phelps said. "The prisoners were all skin and bones. A lot of them were just there dying."

Phelps, now 90 and living on his family's ranch in Gonzales County, said piles of corpses seemed to be everywhere.

"You couldn't get anywhere close without smelling the bodies," Phelps said. "The Germans - they had no pity on anybody."

He said most of the German guards appeared to have fled when the American soldiers arrived at the camp. Most, but not all, Phelps said.

"They (the guards) tried to get away, but several of them got banged over the head and killed," Phelps said. The prisoners "were not really strong but they were so mad. They were going to do whatever they could."

Phelps said some of the prisoners at Mauthausen could speak enough English to communicate even with a country boy from the Texas Hill Country.

"Their reaction was just amazing to me. They came up to all the GIs - the ones that were healthy enough," Phelps said. "They really appreciated the liberation."

The right thing to do

The idea to formally honor Texas soldiers like Havey and Phelps who liberated concentration camps came as a result of the plan to teach the state's schoolchildren about the Holocaust. Convincing men now in their 90s to open up to an interviewer and describe the horrors they encountered as teenage soldiers in Europe was crucial.

"They just could not believe the inhumanity. They said, 'My buddy was shot next to me and died but I had never seen stacks of bodies,' " Berkowitz said. "It bothered them, and that's why they never spoke about it."

Henry Greenbaum was one of the many German prisoners liberated by the Americans.

His brief encounter with U.S. troops on the road to Dachau helped inspire him to become an American. Commemorating the liberators, he said, is the right thing to do.

"It's beautiful. They should be honored and they should get medals," he said. "They were the good guys."

Greenbaum was 17 when he encountered U.S. Army troops on April 25, 1945, near the town of Neunburg vorm Wald - five years since the Germans forced Greenbaum's family into the Jewish ghetto at Starachowice in Poland.

They were more than 100 miles from their intended destination when the Nazi guards suddenly vanished after spotting a long line of tanks and trucks rolling down a nearby highway. The prisoners did not know what to do and remained at the location in the woods where they had been abandoned. When a tank suddenly veered off the road and lumbered toward them, Greenbaum - who didn't recognize the markings and assumed it was German - feared for the worst.

"We kept saying, 'They're going to kill us,' " he said.

But then, the tank shuddered to a stop about 5 feet away from the terrified prisoners.

"This beautiful American soldier squeezed himself out of the hatch. He said, 'We're Americans, and all of you are free,' " Greenbaum, now 88, recalled.

One of his lasting regrets is not knowing the names of the U.S. tank soldiers that he called, "My angels."

"They gave me back my freedom and my will to live. They gave me an opportunity to live another life," said Greenbaum, who came to America after the war and today lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

Mike Glenn grew up in the Navy but enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school in Rockwall, Texas. Following his honorable discharge, Glenn attended the University of Texas at Arlington where he received a BA in History and a commission as a lieutenant in the Army. He led a platoon of cavalry troopers in combat during the Gulf War. Glenn spent about six years in the Army - both as an enlisted soldier and officer. He then studied journalism in graduate school and began his career in the news business. He has worked as a newspaper reporter in the Dallas area, El Paso, San Antonio and now in Houston with the Houston Chronicle. Glenn is married and has a daughter in college.